The Real Deal New York

Norman Sturner merges MHP with Miami’s Banyan Street Capital

Combined firms hold a 15M sf portfolio valued at more than $3B

April 16, 2018 08:45AM

David Sturner, Norman Sturner and 277 Park Avenue, where MHP Real Estate Services’s offices are located

Norman Sturner’s MHP Real Estate Services sold a stake in the company for an undisclosed figure to Miami-based firm Banyan Street Capital, forming a joint venture with a combined portfolio valued at more than $3 billion.

Sturner, MHP’s president and CEO, will hold the position of chairman of the combined companies, the Commercial Observer reported. He will focus on sourcing deals and leading the senior team.

His son, MHP chief operating officer David Sturner, will serve as MHP’s president and CEO.

Banyan Street Capital, an investment and management firm, made one of South Florida’s top 5 most-expensive office building deals last year when it bought a 226,000-squre-foot Fort Lauderdale tower for $81.5 million.

Along with MHP, the two companies have a combined portfolio spanning 15 million square feet along the east coast, with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta and Boston.

“The union of MHP and Banyan Street has been in the works for some time,” Norman Sturner, who co-founded MHP in 1971 with Neil Siderow, said in a prepared remarks. “With MHP’s portfolio at 99-percent occupancy and Banyan Street’s desire to add the metro New York City real estate market to its East Coast portfolio, the alliance simply made sense.”

MHP earlier this year cut ties with longtime head of brokerage David Greene. Sturner at the time explained that “income wasn’t progressing” as he had hoped and he and his son would manage the company’s brokers.

“I’m going to be beating the shit out of my [35] brokers,” he said. [CO] – Rich Bockmann